{% extends "_base.html" %}
{% block bodycontent %}

<img src="/static/logo2a.png"
     id="rehlogo">

<h2>Regex Helper: v{{ version }}</h2>
<p>
  Welcome to the Regex Helper!  This is a small app that I wrote using <a href="https://developers.google.com/appengine/">Google App Engine</a>.
  <br>
  The Regex Helper takes Perl-style regular expressions (regexes? regices?) and the text you want to process, and highlights the results.  There are three utilities available:
  <ul>
    <li><a href="regexmatch.html">Match</a>: Simulates m//.</li>
    <li><a href="regexreplace.html">Replace</a>: Simulates s///.</li>
    <li><a href="regexsplit.html">Split</a>: Simulates split //.</li>
  </ul>
  All three support the i, m, s, x, and g flags.
</p>
<h3>News</h3>
<ul>
	<li>6/20/2013: Version 1.1.  Overhaul of page styling and updates for new versions of python and App Engine.</li>
	<li>6/28/2011: Word-wrapping issue in the results column for really loooooooong words fixed.  Version 1.0.2.</li>
	<li>6/26/2011: Whitespace issues fixed.  Version 1.0.1.  CSS white-space property is for the win.</li> 
	<li>5/8/2011: Launched!  Version 1.0.  Known issues with whitespace.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Background</h3>
<p>
  <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expression">Regular expressions</a>, or regexes, are a powerful text processing tool supported by programming languages such as Perl, Python, Ruby, and PHP.  If you don't already know about regexes, and don't need to learn them, this app is probably of no use to you.
</p>
<h3>Purpose</h3>
<p>
  Have you ever been frustrated when your beautiful, carefully-crafted regex is giving you no results for no discernable reason?  This happens to me a lot, so during my 2010 summer internship I wrote a short Perl script I could paste my text and regices into.  With this tool I could check my code quickly and indepentently of whatever program I happened to be working on, but even this solution started to feel like a lot of steps after a while.
  <br>
  So then I started thinking, &quot;Wouldn't it be nice if this script had an interface so that I could just hit a button instead of saving and running this script over and over?&quot;
  <br>
  &quot;Yes,&quot; I answered myself, &quot;that would be nice.  I sure wish I knew swing, or Tk, or even HTML!&quot;
  <br>
  A scant six months later, I found myself halfway decent at HTML/CSS and Google App Engine, so I dusted off this project and implemented it in the App Engine Python framework.
  <br>
  If you like what I did here, or you have questions/bug reports (the more information the better!), email me at (drexxxxxxstuart@gmaxxxxil.com =~ s/x//g).  Use the Replace app if you are having trouble with that.
</p>
  
  

{% endblock %}
